254 A SUNDAY IN CHEYNE ROW. 



days, but he had not the flexibility of spirit to suc- 

 ceed in these things ; his moral vehemence, his fury 

 of conviction, were too great. 



Great is the power of reaction in the human body ; 

 great is the power of reaction and recoil in all or- 

 ganic nature. But apparently there was no power 

 of reaction in Carlyle's mind ; he never reacts from 

 his own extreme views ; never looks for the com- 

 pensations, never seeks to place himself at the point 

 of equilibrium, or adjusts his view to other related 

 facts. He saw the value of the hero, the able man, 

 and he precipitated himself upon this fact with such 

 violence, so detached it and magnified it, that it fits 

 with no modern system of things. He was appar- 

 ently entirely honest in his conviction that modern 

 governments and social organizations were rushing 

 swiftly to chaos and ruin, because the hero, the nat- 

 ural leader, was not at the head of affairs, over- 

 looking entirely the many checks and compensations, 

 and ignoring the fact that under a popular govern- 

 ment especially, nations are neither made nor un- 

 made by the wisdom or folly of their rulers, but by 

 the character for wisdom and virtue of the mass of 

 their citizens. "Where the great mass of men is 

 tolerably right," he himself says, " all is right ; where 

 they are not right, all is wrong." What difference 

 can it make to America, for instance, to the real 

 growth and prosperity of the nation, whether the 

 ablest man goes to Congress or fills the Presidency. 

 or the second or third ablest ? The most that we can 



